It is common practice in the packaging industry to fill a paperboard box with a product and, thereafter, to secure a lid to the open top of the loaded box. A variety of lidding machines have heretofore been devised for this purpose of the type in which the machine forms the lid from a precut blank around the top of the box and secures the lid in place by a fastening means such as glue or staples. Several problems have been encountered with such machines, particularly in situations where the preloaded box contains unstable articles such as tall bottles, or the box is of the display type having an abbreviated wall or walls, or when a hot melt adhesive is used to secure the lid to the preformed box.
More particularly, when the box contains unstable articles, the infeed conveyor of the lidding machine must decelerate and accelerate the loaded boxes relative to the lidding station at low rates in order to prevent jarring and tipping of the contained products. In lidding machines wherein a hot melt adhesive is used to secure the lid to a display box, the upper ends of the box walls have a small resistance to deflection when compression is applied to disperse the glue between the lid flanges and the side wall of the box. Accordingly, as a low compression force is applied, the dwell time of compression is relatively great, the box may be distorted, and the production rate of the lidding machine is correspondingly diminished. These and other disadvantages of the prior art machines are obviated or diminished by the present invention.